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18/10/2010

Not where from but where to...

Open Space - Zentrum fur Kunstprojekte, Wien

curated by Alenka Gregorič

Participating artists:
Nika Autor
Nemanja Cvijanović
Vuk Ćosić
Katarina Zdjelar

It is easy to say that the society we live in today is driven by the power of money. The power relations – which are created through the channels of capital driven society – are in hands of a few subjects keeping not only their strategic positions but also manipulating media, politics and economics. Of course, this is no longer news and for the last few of decades it is accepted as just part of our reality. The constraints of these power driven relations are commonplace and their effects are obvious. However, the revolutionary spirit of 1968, the idea of changing the established order in various social spheres of life and giving the voice to the ones outside the power structures is, although faint, still alive today.

I would say that there is still a common ground for revolutionary thinking, but it is – in a way – articulated through local territorial, geographical and political units. Because the world is rushing towards a globally oriented society, acting locally raises questions which could change the reality of many – but on a small(er) scale. In the last few years we can trace the growth of art initiatives and projects that eschew the globally oriented for the locally specific. Artists are often responding to their immediate social and political environment, raising questions about the microcosms they live and work in. We could easily call them small-scale revolutionaries because they are questioning their immediate social and political surroundings. These micro-revolutions featured in their artworks, whether documenting the foundation of political parties, tracing the graphical representations of borders, or examining the local media representation of marginalised people, render the effects of the global through the contours of the local.

Information on the artists:

Nika Autor
Postcards
Experimental film, PAL DVD, 2010
The film is trying to expose the absurdity of the regime that the European Union is imposing on a migrant population. She wanted to manifest the absurdity of certain relations that are being forced upon individuals to partake in them. Her work is the reaction to the relations of inequality, to an unequal distribution of power that is being historically reproduced through the domination of power relations on both national and global level. In the film she tried to join the selected footages from different sources reflecting on the idea of democracy of the European neo-liberal system. The footages are taken from the National Archive of Radio and Television of Slovenia from media reports on migrant questions taken from 2001-2008.

The Film is trying to expose the struggle and life of the asylum seekers in Slovenia. Asylum seekers are more and more becoming the object of systematic physical and psychological violence. The Asylum Centre has become an instrument for averting asylum seekers’ and dismantling the right to asylum, rather than being an instrument of their protection. An ever more present repression over asylum seekers coincides with the trend of asylum law. The Film exposes the structure of the asylum legal regulation, its transformation, the disappearance of the right to asylum, the criminalization of asylum seekers, systematic physical and psychological violence over asylum seekers, emergent of the European apartheid system, the system of production of “sans papieres” while pointing out the self-organization of asylum seekers themselves and the meaning of social centres and open autonomous spaces that self-organized asylum seekers and their supporters are using in their everyday organizing.

Vuk Ćosić
Greater Slovenia, 2004
Series of pretty computer graphics in medium format
The project is researching the visual image of the Slovenian territory in maps of Europe and the World. First findings are confirming that Slovenia is very decorative. Also, it is recommendable for countries to remain above pixel size, and if that is unavoidable then stay square in order to be correctly represented.

Nemanja Cvijanović
Mount Triglav on The Adriatic Sea, 2010
Happening (performed as a sign of gratitude of Croatian people to the people of Slovenia at the rational decision on the referendum on border arbitration)
Mount Triglav on The Adriatic Sea is a peculiar continuation of three happenings performed by Slovene artists, historic and contemporary, using the idea of mount Triglav as an allegorical symbol of geography, nationality, and state, which possesses a historically constructed identity. The live sculpture Triglav was first performed in the Zvezda park in Ljubljana on December 30th 1968 by David Nez, Milenko Matanović and Drago Dellabernardina, members of OHO, the most important neoavantgarde movement in Slovenia. The group IRWIN reconstructed this action in 2004, while in 2009 the artists Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša performed a happening they entitled Triglav on Triglav as a reconstruction of the works of OHO and IRWIN with the intent of continuing conceptual art in Slovenia and exposing the ideological links of contemporary and past history.
Allegorically, in Slovenia Mount Triglav is a symbol, its identity is artificially constructed and linked to the people and the country, while in Croatia the same holds for the Adriatic Sea. Mount Triglav on The Adriatic Sea attempts to deconstruct these identities and challenges the exclusive right of newly constructed neighbouring nations to make use of these symbols. Triglav on The Adriatic Sea was performed on June 2 during a 2010 DOPUST festival at the legendary Bačvice beach in Split, to show gratitude for the decision by Slovenia on the border arbitration referendum.

Katarina Zdjelar
We need to have civil consciousness and basta, 2010
video
In her video piece We need to have civil consciousness and basta, Katarina Zdjelar focuses on a group of concerned citizens in Naples who rally around the common idea of making a difference in politics. We follow a crucial meeting, at which they are deciding whether they should become a political party or not. Rather than evolving around the participants’ standpoint, concrete proposals, agreements and disagreements, the piece looks at the moment of transition, in which a citizen-enthusiast becomes a politician.

Image: Nika Autor

Opening: 19 October, 19.00 pm

Open Space
Zentrum für Kunstprojekte
Lassingleithnerplatz 2, A- 1020 Vienna
Open Friday, Saturday 13.00 - 18.30 and open for the rest of the week days by appointment only
Admission free

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